filled my own eyes.
While we were talking, a poor little girl, who I knew, by her neat
uniform, belonged to Miss Stanley's school, passed us with a little
basket in her hand. James called to her, "Make haste, Rachel, you are
after your time."

"What, this is market-day, James, is it?" said Doctor Barlow, "and
Rachel is come for her nosegays." "Yes, sir," said James; "I forgot to
tell their honors, that every Saturday, as soon as her school is over,
the younger Misses give Rachel leave to come and fetch some flowers out
of their garden, which she carries to the town to sell; she commonly
gets a shilling, half of which they make her lay out to bring home a
little tea for her poor sick mother, and the other half she lays up to
buy shoes and stockings for herself and her crippled sister. Every
little is a help where there is nothing, sir."

Sir John said nothing, but looked at Lady Belfield, whose eyes glistened
while she softly said, "O, how little do the rich ever think what the
aggregate even of their own squandered shillings would do in the way of
charity, were they systematically applied to it!"

James now unlocked a little private door, which opened into the
pleasure-ground. There, at a distance, sitting in a circle on the
new-mown grass, under a tree, we beheld all the little Stanleys, with a
basket of flowers between them, out of which they were earnestly
employed in sorting and tying up nosegays. We stood some time admiring
their little busy faces and active fingers, without their perceiving us,
and got up to them just as they were putting their prettily-formed
bouquets into Rachel's basket, with which she marched off, with many
charges from the children to waste no time by the way, and to be sure to
leave the nosegay that had the myrtle in it at Mrs. Williams's.

"How many nosegays have you given to Rachel to-day, Louisa?" said Dr.
Barlow to the eldest of the four. "Only three apiece, sir," replied she.
"We think it a bad day when we can't make up our dozen. They are all our
own; we seldom touch mamma's flowers, and we never suffer James to take
ours, because Ph[oe]be says it might be tempting him. Little Jane
lamented that Lucilla had given them nothing to-day, except two or three
sprigs of her best flowering myrtle, which," added she, "we make Rachel
give into the bargain to a poor sick lady who loves flowers, and used to
have good ones of her own, but who has now no money to spare, and could
not afford to